I know a woman whose husband is, like mine, a sex addict. Over the course of her marriage, before her husband entered recovery, her physical health gradually deteriorated. Doctors couldn't determine the cause of her symptoms, of her pain, but her condition continued to worsen, until it became so severe at times that she had to be hospitalized. When her husband finally hit bottom, finally came clean, finally owned up to the years of lies, finally entered recovery, her body began to heal, her pain dissipated, her symptoms gradually vanished. The psychological strain and stress of dealing with her husband's addiction, of carrying an unknown, invisible emotional burden had been killing her body.

This wedding I attended was hard, and I couldn't help but think of her this past weekend, as my own emotional discomfort manifested itself physically. It started building, gradually, during the ride to the airport: the knot in my stomach, the tightness in every muscle in my body, the need to consciously will myself to keep breathing. Of course, I knew it didn't help that I was flying (you will recall that I hate flying). And it didn't help that the wedding was held in the middle of Northeast Nowhere. Beautiful? Yes. Direct flights from where I live? No. That means changing planes, doubling the number of takeoffs and landings, and that means doubling the anxiety. When I have multiple connections to make, I mentally tick off each one: two takeoffs and two landings left, one more takeoff and two landings left, one more landing and one takeoff left, just one more landing left, ah! safe...

By the time I arrived in the Charlotte airport to catch my connecting flight to Northeast Nowhere, I had a tightly nauseated, choking sensation in my throat and stomach that remained with me until my return home. Everything from my throat down through my abdomen was constricted in such knots for the majority of the trip that I felt certain if I swallowed a bite of food, I would vomit up a lung or simply explode, internal organs blasted out of my body and plastered to the walls. I barely ate for three days; at each meal, I'd take a tiny, tentative bite and then abandon the entire endeavor.

Each day, I did yoga, and each day, it didn't help. I'd position myself, only to have voices flying up through the window and tug me off balance. When I stand in Warrior II, I like to think that I am standing, as my yoga instructor once said, with one hand reaching to the future and one hand reaching to the past, while my torso stays perfectly upright, centered in the Now. But in that room, in that inn, my torso didn't stay upright, but leaned and listed, pulled along with my mind, by one hand or the other, out of the present. I would sit in meditation, tense and unable to breathe. I would will each muscle to relax and find it still contracted. Or it would relax for a heartbeat, for a blink, to tense again as soon as I concentrated on the next muscle.

I knew my mind was making my body sick, making it hurt, but try as I might, I couldn't fix my mind, and so couldn't fix my body. In the end, what fixed the problem was leaving. I felt like a pregnant woman with gestational diabetes or pre-eclampsia, conditions that are caused by pregnancy and only resolve, can only be cured, by the birth of the baby, the removal of that tiny parasitic burden from the woman's body. After I said my goodbyes and left the inn to drive back to the airport, my mind finally released the burden it was carrying, the worst of the tension left, my body relaxed, and I could eat again, breathe again.